Friday, January 11, 2008

Conservations with God

I'm on my couch, the jazz playing in a dark room as this conversation begins like so many others. The jazz has no words, so no loose ideas penetrate. My conversation fills the space, but no sound other than Charlie Parker's horn is heard. I can feel the vibration of the world.

It's usually dark when I talk to him, as though the night hides his form as he listens to my story, a story he already knows. The music plays, the lazy melodies of jazz or the point and counterpoint of classical soothe my the fine cracks in my soul. I ask the questions I've asked a million times, on a thousand nights, sober and with my brain wrapped in the fumes of fine spirits, hoping the answers will hit me as an epiphany and sweep away the pain and explain the past, explain me.

They never come.

People tell me God gives you no more than you can handle. And though my journey has been blessed, there are nights when I felt as alone as anyone in the world. Nights I wanted to curl up and let go of reality.

I want to believe God answers in his own way. The random of the world shaping my outcomes, so that when I flip that mental coin he has his fingers in the grooves, pushing it so that I make his decision. Sometimes it's a song I haven't heard in ages or a book I never would have read that looks like the message, but I don't know if I even have the sight to see the answer even if it were handed to me. I might be deluding myself into thinking I'm important enough to warrant response.

The mood of my conversation is somber. Cries for clarity really, as we re-hash the past and all the decisions made, good or bad, right or wrong. Opportunities not missed, but laid aside. Moments that I wish I could have again if only one time. I pull the cushion closer, against the chill and the loneliness that causes the need for this dialogue with my creator to exist.

Sometimes I'm clear eyed. Sometimes the tears well in my eyes and fight to hold them in, afraid to let out the emotion that I've oh so carefully hidden away, for fear that it might consume me, cripple me. Sometimes I can feel the empty in my chest, like my soul has left me hollow as it goes in search of resolution. Sometimes it's like I'm talking to an old friend, who will listen just because I need to talk.

Why? Why not me? Why not now? Why did it have to be this way? Am I not worthy? Am I not good enough? Why in the grand scheme of things was this that felt so right not to be? And if not this, then what? The questions fade into gibberish most times, as prayer or sleep or whatever slides over me. Sometimes it's a chat, other times it's hours later I realize that I've been unmoving as I search into the ether for answers. One day I hope to be refreshed by the experience, but for now the sound in my own soul echos.

The music still plays now, piano with a lively tempo. The room seems colder and I wonder how many songs have played, how much time has passed this time. I've been talking, speaking, asking for two days and it feels like I just started a few seconds ago.